Tuesday, February 05, 2008

NYC - Part2

I keep waiting to not be tired so I can write about my trip: the details about my epic subway ride, how the EMTs had to peel me off the floor of the L train at Lorimer Street, how they carried me out of the subway in an ugly collapsible orange chair (yup, like a queen, like a really nauseous, pale, dizzy, sweaty queen), the great team of folks that helped me in the ER at Beth Israel, and the devotion of a dear friend who stayed with me for the long six hospital hours.

And all of this followed by a great weekend in the city with another dear friend from the Northwest. We ate awesome food (Greek at Keffi in the Upper West Side; healthy Lower East Side cafe grub at the Life Cafe; Middle Eastern pizza, or "pitza", at Moustache's on Bedford in the West Village with another good friend; and other spotty snacks around town). We trudged through the rain (in good spirits) the night we landed in Keffi (yum!... a shared calamari plate which included not just squid but fried chickpeas, and, get this, fried LEMON slices...delicious...then sheep cheese dumplings with spiced turkey sausage, capers, and olives in a tomato sauce). After Keffi was a cab across town to the Hungarian House for a Greek folk dance class with the lovely and talented teacher Kyriakos Moisidis (1...2...3... 1...2...3... bounce... 1...2...3... 1...2...3...bounce), and live brass music.

And then there was the AWP conference, and the reunion with long-ago Alabama friends and teachers, energized conversations about writing and living and working, and a couple great panels I went to.

Here's this from Richard Bausch (which I think comes through him from a long-dead writer): "Every great work is written a little at a time, over time, in tremendous doubt and confusion...so if you're confused with your work, don't think you're doing something wrong. Return to it every day, let it know you are there, and one day it will bless you."

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Health, stealth, and the exploration of the wide-open-but-sometimes-craggy-and-hard-to-navigate landscape of having a body, a mind, and something else none of us can put a finger on but oh do we try. (And, also, sometimes, frogs, punk rock, and unsolicited advice.)